vwolf

Which effort level did you use for that? (Will do my own tests with fable today)

For your friends app, I had to go into the app store and then expand the description to view the key features, where it is mentioned that it uses AI similarly as Cal AI. Just based off the initial images of Eat compared to Cal AI, then it's much more clear what Cal AI does compared to yours (besides plastering AI everywhere).

Another thing I noticed is that I saw a random guy with a rather big following being sponsored by Cal AI. Maybe your friend was unsuccessful in getting his app out there? Although I agree that luck will always play a role, but when the public don't understand what it does and they believe it to be pure magic, then sprinkling that everywhere will get something like Cal AI flying.

I still think it is shit from a technical perspective in terms of the validity of amount of calories from a single image and nothing else. But it seems like that's not what people want, inherently because they are lazy. Actually counting calories is much harder long term. If regular people now think that this is magically replacing this process by just snapping a picture of their processed meal, then I can see why it's successful. Although quite depressing...

I can attest to that. I had worked on a product for a couple of years and received feedback from our support team, but never seen how the product was used in real life. One time, we had a specific bug that the customers were complaining about, and no matter how they described it, we couldn't figure out what the problem was. That was until I went to one of the customer sites and saw how the users were interacting with the product.

When they tried to demonstrate the bug, it was immediately clear to me what the issue was. That was the first time I really grasped the difference in how we approach software products. It also helped me see how the product could improve their job by watching how the process was in real life. Gave me a lot of ideas on how to make their job easier by using the product.